To say that all Protestants automatically aren’t heretics “because they don’t know the truth” is a bit ridiculous, frankly, just as ridiculous as the absolute opposite of that.
I dare you to tell that to Pope Benedict XVI to his face, after what he recently said in defense of Protestants, defending them from the Catholic laity who attacks them. Trust me, you don’t want to be the target of the “Ratzinger Look”. Those who were his students once upon a time know why he was call Rottweiler. He had no tolerance for those who could not match his intelligence. If you were going to disagree with him, you were free to do so, but you had to defeat him first. I remember a Salesian telling the story of the time that he said the Professor Ratzinger, "But Pope Pius V said . . . " And the Cardinal responded, “Tell me something that Pope Pius said that I don’t know or don’t understand as well as you do.” He said that he wished the floor would swallow him up. No thanks. I’m not for a contest of wits against minds like John Paul II and Benedict XVI. When they make statements, they are very well grounded in Tradition, philosophy and law.
Once again, the issue, as Br. JR pointed out, is language.
Super-Happy-Fun language doesn’t help that. Truth still remains and must be accepted. Ignorance, true ignorance, is the only excuse.
Truth does not change, but what Popes John Paul and Benedict are doing is borrowing from two of the greatest thinkers on this subject, Maximilian Kolbe and John Henry Newman. There is a development of Christian doctrine and those who do not understand it are not culpable for not embracing it. The question is not about truth. It’s about culpability. Culpability is proportionate to understanding the the degree to which one rejects what one truly understands.
Most Protestants are not truly ignorant, but willfully so. That’s the rub.
On the contrary, most are truly ignorant, because they do not understand. That was what John Henry Newman and Maximilian Kolbe explained. The Church agrees with them and has adopted their position as the formal position of the Catholic Church and teaches it as such in LG, GS, CCC and Ut Unum Sint. Ut Unum Sint may as well have been written by Newman.
Newman is very reliable, not only because he was a scholar, but also because he was a Protestant. He knew the difference between knowing what the Catholic Church taught and being able to wrap your head around it, in good faith.
Newman took his argument from Augustine. No one should act on a doubtful conscience, not even a Protestant. It took him a long trip around the Fathers of the Church to come for faith and reason to come to terms with Catholic teaching and then make the leap into Catholicism.
There is a Passionist confessor, who is not very famous, but who received Newman into the Church. He would later write that the road from Protestantism to Catholicism is not an easy one. He used Newman as the example. He found that because Newman was truly a man of faith, not just a cultural Protestant, he could not make the transition from Protestantism to Catholicism without the reconciliation between faith and reason.
Reason was telling him that the Catholic Church had preserved the faith of the Fathers. His faith was telling him not to trust his reason. This Passionist, knowing the struggle that Newman was going through decided to help his faith. He worked very hard persuade Newman’s faith that the transition was the Will of God. Newman later wrote about this and more in his Apologia. Which everyone should read before they talk about Protestantism and heresy. It sheds a great deal of light on the subject.
Therein lies the problem. If the Protestant truly believes that the moving from there to here is contrary to the will of God, then his position is invincible and there is no culpability. He remains in error through no fault of his own. Remember what I said, what the layman calls invincible and what the theologian and the hierarchy call invincible are not the same thing. We don’t speak the same language in the Catholic Church. The average layman defines his terms using Webster. The Church uses the dictionary of theology and philosophy. They don’t always agree with Webster.*
Everyone has to wait. When the Holy Spirit stirs him to search, he will be ready to find. At the point that he finds that it is not contrary to God’s will that he move and that it’s even more beneficial for him and others, then he has a moral duty to do so. At that point, if he chooses to remain because it will upset his grandma’ then he’s morally culpable. But first he has to reach that point where faith and reason are in harmony.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF :snowing:
- For anyone who is interested and can spend about $150.00, a dictionary of theology and a dictionary of philosophy are very good investments.
In no way is it meant negatively. I don’t see how that’s bad. In fact, hopeless ignorance is a very kind concession to those peoples who have never been properly evangelized.
I’m glad the Church doesn’t teach that. Taking to heart JR’s post about the necessity of faith informing reason suggests to me that if rejection occurred after conversion, then reason may not have been fully informed. This is the area of soul that only God knows, and we cannot judge.